08.02.12 Finance Working Group Meeting

Over the weekend some money went missing at the same time as a page was torn out of the money-in book. The individual on duty at the time has questionable integrity. We need a better system. A further £20 went missing when an individual took the note to tranquillity team. The tranquillity team allege to only have received £10. Notes have been found only half pushed into the money box. It is suggested that this could be intentional by a minority of volunteers in Info who then fish out the notes at a later time. There is a problem with the finance book in info. Past books have disappeared.

PayPal:

Suggestion is to set up a Pay Pal account and donate button to streamline the donations system. All present were in agreement. It was noted that Liz [Finance] has previously expressed concern that we should wait till the Coop bank account is set up. To set up the PayPal account we would use the Gmail finance account and put the paypal widget button on the old and new sites. Action: Em will contact the web controllers.Action: Luke will contact Vica for agreement and to get access to finance gmail account.

Documents going on line:

Should we put on line the Climate Account bank statements and cash flow document of the first three months of Occupy? Issue raised is that as this action is been demanded by active ‘conspiracy theory’ advocates, we should not placate them. Luke [Finance] stands aside as he feels we should not feed the trolls. Finance position is that releasing this material on line will give the general public the chance to decide for themselves on finance management. Action: Em will talk to press about uploading the documents.

Re-cap on signatories:

Conspiracy advocates are demanding to know who the Climate Camp a/c signatories are. We are unable to release this information. Once the Occupy Co-op a/c is set up the same people will demand to know who the occupy Signatories are. We need to set up an email group-space for the signatories to talk with each other. We agree the Finance team will not be on this group-space. It has been requested by the signatories. Action: Vica will set this up and signatory [****] will act as our go between.

The Finance team would like to make public the names of the signatories but only when they feel ready to go public. Concern raised over one signatory who is waivering due to external pressure from conspirators.

Review of GA and future GA’s

Should we have a finance GA next week at LSX? Concern is to prevent a ‘run on the bank’. What constitutes an emergency expense? Should there be a minimum amount of requests? Can the Finance GA make a spontaneous ad-hoc change to the process in order to access funds? We feel No. Changes to the process must be drafted as a proposal and brought to the process WG to be brought to a GA.

Case Study on emergency spending: Recently some campers came to the GA and requested £500.00 without having made a request. They leveraged the release of the said sum. It was given over to Shelter WG, Kitchen WG and Welfare WG for cold weather spending. After the meeting the sum was divided:

Another camper (C) spontaneously bought space blankets which were reimbursed by Shelter WG. Campers A&B bought a further quantity of Tarps outside their fund which were reimbursed by Shelter. The matter caused alarm amongst the Finance Group as there were calls to release the entire bank account for Saint Paul’s camp.